Six
high school girls, all African-American, are seated on couches at
a diocesan youth retreat. It’s Friday evening, just the beginning
of the weekend retreat held in the oak-studded hills of Lafayette,
a half hour east of Oakland, California. The girls are already sharing
secrets: The conversation flows from media images of black women to
hairstyles to bulimia to sports to college.

The retreat is a rare
chance for some of these high school students to talk with other black
girls. In fact, meeting other African-American girls and women—the
mentors who run the retreat—was the single greatest reason the girls
gave for wanting to attend. Most of them hail from Catholic schools
with few other African-American students.

“There’s a certain kind
of isolation that they feel,” says Toinette Eugene, director of the
African American Catholic Pastoral Center for the Oakland Diocese.
“They want to be able to network.”

Eugene’s center sponsored
the retreat: It invited African-American girls who are juniors and
seniors at Catholic high schools in the diocese, accepted the first
35 who responded, and paid for meals and lodging. Two years ago, the
center sponsored a similar retreat for African-American boys.

Coordinating these retreats
isn’t all Toinette Eugene does, but her work as director follows a
similar theme: to ease the isolation that many black Catholics feel
in the Church—and to help ease racial relations throughout the diocese.
“The center isn’t simply a vehicle to address the needs of black Catholics,”
Eugene says. “It’s also a resource and presence for the entire diocese.”

Dioceses and archdioceses
all over the nation have centers like Eugene’s, from Oakland to Santa
Fe, Chicago, South Dakota, central New Jersey and rural Louisiana.
Called by many names, such as the Office of Black Catholics, Diocesan
Council for Black Catholics, African American Pastoral Center, the
offices all share the goal of making African-Americans feel welcome
in the Church.

Now, 30 years after
the first office opened and nearly 100 offices later, these centers
have played a crucial role in making the Church truly catholic. St.
Anthony Messenger polled black Catholic Church leaders by phone
for an informal sampling on the situation in the U.S. Church.

“The work of the offices
[for black Catholics] has contributed greatly to opening the doors
of the Church to minorities,” says Hilbert Stanley, executive director
of the National Black Catholic Congress.
He added that the number of African-American Catholics is increasing
partly because of the work of these offices.

African-American Catholics
are still very much the minority, not only among African-Americans
in general, most of whom are Protestant, but also within the Church.
While as many as three million African-Americans are Catholic, they
make up only about three percent of all U.S. Catholics, according
to the CARA Catholic Poll 2000. And while there are more than 1,000
parishes that are predominantly African-American, most of the other
18,000 U.S. Catholic parishes are predominantly white.

“Many parishioners are
still struggling with this issue of inclusion, to understand that
we have some people who look a little different from us,” says Joseph
Powell, chairman of the Commission for African-American Catholic Ministry
in Piscataway, New Jersey, and president of the National Association
of Black Catholic Administrators.

In some churches, agrees
Stanley, “I have seen a reluctance to shake the hand of a black person.”
Probably the most important role of the offices for black Catholics
is to educate. The directors hold workshops on racism at parishes;
they make presentations at schools on racial prejudices; they make
sure an African-American perspective is included in liturgy and textbooks.

Several years ago Findley’s
office started In One Body, a program of workshops on racism. He visited
a number of parishes to talk about racism and held meetings on the
topic. “The program has not been in effect for the last three or four
years, but there are still parishes that are holding meetings,” he
says. One church in Kentucky has an ongoing group of all-white parishioners
who meet to gain a better understanding of what racism is and how
to eliminate it.

But the education isn’t
just for white parishioners: The directors also educate African-Americans
about their history in the Church. Father James Moran, chairman of
the black affairs committee in the Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana,
organized a celebration for the African-American community during
Black History Month a few years ago. At the event, one speaker discussed
the biblical tradition of Africans, including the black popes in the
Church’s early years and the history of Christianity in Ethiopia.

“It’s easy to think
we were converted on the plantation,” the Rev. Moran says. “But black
Catholics have been a part of the Church a lot longer than we think.”

He added that the children,
especially, were surprised to learn this. “They don’t get that history
in school. They were very wide-eyed.”

Ministers receive an
education as well: Father Jayson Landeza, the Asian pastor of an African-American
parish in Oakland, attended a workshop for pastoring African-Americans
on the advice of office director Eugene. The workshop, at Xavier
University in New Orleans, opened his eyes to the history of racism
in the Church—the fact that black parishioners had to sit in the back
of the church and take Communion after white parishioners, for example,
or that nuns sometimes used to bring along their slaves when they
joined a convent.

Xavier University in
New Orleans, established by St. Katharine Drexel, is the only black
Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States. It is
the institution most responsible for the education not only of Father
Landeza but also of Catholics of all ethnic origins who want to learn
more about black Catholics in the United States.

“That’s not part of
the seminary curriculum,” he adds. Considering the racism experienced
by black Catholics, “It’s a real miracle that there’s still a vibrant
African-American Catholic community.” Besides educating the community,
the directors of these offices also ensure that the African-Americans
in their diocese have a voice and a presence in the Church. They promote
hiring in Church positions and encourage blacks to participate in
various functions.

Findley says that whenever
his diocese forms a new commission—for youth, worship or religious
education, for example—he lobbies for an African-American member.
“Every opportunity I get, I try to make sure there is at least one
voice, if not more, on that commission.”

Finally, the directors
help bridge the culture gap for black Catholics. They say that many
African-Americans feel the Church is culturally white in its speech,
its celebration and its music. By introducing some black culture,
such as gospel music and revival traditions, they can help African-Americans
feel more welcome.

“We have grown up in
a European-centered Church,” adds Congress leader Stanley. “In some
places, if you say ‘Amen’ out loud, people see you as a freak.” A
Church that welcomes and celebrates African-American culture, he says,
“helps black people realize, ‘I don’t need to check my blackness [at
the door] when I walk into the church. I can be black and be Catholic.’”

The directors help celebrate
black culture by creating fraternal organizations for African-Americans
in their dioceses and by holding revivals and gospel Masses. “We like
a little different music and a little different celebration,” says
Joseph Powell of New Jersey. A parish in his diocese holds a gospel
Mass twice a month, and he helped establish a Martin de Porres Society,
named for the 17th-century Peruvian black saint, a Dominican friar
who founded an orphanage and a hospital for children.

Just having the offices
for black Catholics, which are always staffed by African-Americans,
helps send the message to any wary black Catholics that the diocese
not only has other black Catholics, but also welcomes African-Americans
to its churches. “It’s important for others to see that there are
black Catholics,” Powell says.

The offices may be only 30 years old, but the history of black Africans
in the Catholic Church goes back to the beginning. The first black
African Christian was the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40), whom the
disciple Philip met on the road and baptized. Black Catholic historian
Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., notes that, in ancient times, “Ethiopian” did
not so much indicate a place of origin as it described skin color.

The first black African to be canonized was St. Moses the Black,
an outlaw and leader of a band of bandits who had fled into the desert
of Egypt to avoid taxes. There he converted to Christianity and became
the spiritual leader of a group of monks. He was martyred in 410 A.D.

Three popes in the early Church—Victor I, Miltiades (or Melchiades)
and Gelasius I—were African, although it’s not clear whether any of
them was black African. But one of the early Christian nations was
Ethiopia, a black African nation that was Christian by the end of
the fifth century. The Ethiopians, then as now, celebrated with liturgy,
rites, dance and music unique to their culture.

Another African nation, the Congo, was briefly Catholic after its
king, Alfonso the Good, allied with Portuguese traders and converted.
Alfonso’s son became bishop of the Congo in 1521. But the Portuguese
slave trade, and Alfonso’s participation in it, eventually drove many
Congolese from the Church, and after the deaths of Alfonso and his
son, the Congo was no longer a Christian nation.

Africans and the Catholic Church met up again in slave-owning states
that were Catholic strongholds—Maryland and Louisiana. There many
slaves converted to Catholicism. Some religious men and women held
slaves. The Jesuits in Baltimore, for instance, owned slaves who worked
their land, and Ursuline nuns in New Orleans brought slaves with them
to the convent.

While many African-Americans, free and slave, were Catholic in these
areas, they were often barred from joining white religious organizations.
So they found their own way. Two women founded orders for African-Americans:
Elizabeth Lange formed the Oblate
Sisters of Providence in Baltimore in 1829, and Henriette Delille
founded the Sisters
of the Holy Family in New Orleans in 1842.

Three sons of Michael Healy, a Georgia plantation owner, and Mary
Eliza, a slave woman, became the first three black priests in the
United States. James and Alexander were priests of the Archdiocese
of Boston. James became the first black Catholic bishop in the United
States, becoming bishop of Portland, Maine, in 1875. Patrick was ordained
as a Jesuit in 1854 and became president of Georgetown University
in 1874. Historian Cyprian Davis says that Patrick concealed his African
ancestry, though the other two were more generally regarded as black.

The first U.S. priest to be known as black by all was Augustus Tolton,
ordained in Rome in 1886, having been championed by Franciscan Michael
Richardt, one of his college professors.

During the 20th century, the Church gradually became more and more
attentive to black concerns, admitting more African-Americans to religious
orders or the priesthood and discussing the immorality of racism.
Many African-Americans converted to Catholicism because of the work
of missionary orders such as the Josephites (an offshoot of the Mill
Hill Missionaries), the Society of the Divine Word and, more recently,
the Society of St. Edmund.

Others converted because they had attended Catholic schools, often
taught by women religious. At the same time, however, many African-American
Catholics also left the Church because of racism.

The civil-rights movement led to radical changes for African-American
Catholics. Some of these were unfortunate: in the South, the Church
made the mistake of closing black churches, saying the parishioners
were now welcome to attend the “regular church.” In parishes once
exclusively white, many African-Americans felt no sense of belonging.

Other changes had better consequences: The
Black Sisters Conference was founded, the National Office for
Black Catholics opened and the National Black Clergy Caucus formed.
All these helped to expose racism in the Church and opened it to more
African-Americans. In 1970, the Archdiocese of Detroit opened the
country’s first office for black Catholics.

As the United States has grown more racially diverse, dioceses and
archdioceses have opened offices and centers for other minority groups.
There are offices for Latinos, Filipinos, Native Americans, Chinese
and others. As a result, some dioceses have started to group the offices
under a multicultural umbrella, with one director reporting to the
bishop.

“There’s a concern that bishops are reorganizing the offices as multicultural
centers rather than a stand-alone office directly under the bishop,”
says Powell. Some members of his organization, the National Association
for Black Catholic Administrators, are worried that their influence
will be diluted because they are one step further away from the bishop
or archbishop.

But others feel that as long as there is an office or a center with
an African-American director, black Catholics still have a voice in
the diocese. And, some feel, African-American Catholics have come
far enough that they don’t have to worry about these offices losing
their clout.

“Today, perhaps, the leadership has come forward and we don’t have
to be close to the bishops,” says Jackie Wilson, director of the Office
of Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of Washington. “Perhaps we don’t
need that protection. Thirty years ago, there was a need.”

The girls on the weekend
retreat are unaware of diocesan offices and of Church structures in
general. They’re just glad to have mentors, African-American Catholic
women, to help guide them into adulthood.

“These media images,
they end up filling our minds,” Janet Stickmon, one of the mentors,
is telling the girls. “It’s important to set our own standards of
beauty because the other standards work too well. We must examine
those elements of us and our appearance that are fake and bring out
those things that are beautiful.”

Stickmon then asks each
of the girls to write down what is fake about herself on a slip of
paper. She places a bowl in the center of the room and tells them
to put the paper in the bowl.

“We hope that by putting
what is fake about you in this bowl you will leave it here,” she says.
The mentors then proclaim Proverbs 31:25-26: “She is clothed in dignity
and power and can afford to laugh at tomorrow. When she opens her
mouth, it is to speak wisely, and loyalty is the theme of her teaching.”

Older counterparts of
these young black Catholics are aware that the Catholic Church in
the United States is increasingly diverse. Of its 62 million members,
an Encuentro 2000 survey counted 26.5 percent as Hispanic/Latino,
0.5 percent as Native American and 3.5 percent as Asian. Sometimes
black Catholics feel other Catholics are less conscious of this diversity.

Toinette Eugene and
her counterparts in Church posts across the United States work to
ensure that black Catholics of all ages experience their dignity and
their power and see their wisdom respected in the Church they have
chosen.

Mandy Erickson, a freelance
writer and editor, lives in San Francisco with her husband and son.

"We
believe that the Holy Father has laid a challenge before us to share the
gift of our Blackness with the Church in the United States."

'What
We Have Seen and Heard': A Pastoral Letter on Evangelization From the
Black Bishops of the United States